A conflict is raging around the research of Alfred Ernst, a former rector of the University of Zurich. | Image: Wilhelm Pleyer/ETH Zurich, Library

Four years ago, Henriette Haas, a forensic psychologist at the University of Zurich, filed a complaint with the Executive Board of her university against the historian Pascal Germann on suspicion of scholarly impropriety. She claimed that his doctoral thesis contained data that had been falsified, omitted, and arbitrarily interpreted. The thesis in question examines the history of racial research and human genetics in Switzerland, including the research of Alfred Ernst, a botanist and former Rector of the University who was also Haas’ grandfather. In 1922 Ernst co-founded the Julius Klaus Foundation whose aim was “the racial improvement of human beings”.

An external expert was appointed to provide an opinion. In July 2021, the expert exonerated Germann on all counts. But Haas continues to fight Germann’s thesis, and the dispute has meanwhile been taken up by the Swiss fortnightly magazine ‘Beobachter’. For example, she writes: “Why does [Germann] not formulate any of his vague accusations as a direct, falsifiable statement? Can such an approach be called scientific”?

At the insistence of the University of Zurich, Medialex subsequently added a reference to the abovementioned expert opinion supporting Germann. The Beobachter also claims that the University is considering legal action against Haas. Germann is now a senior assistant at the University of Bern. He told the Beobachter that a historian has to expect harsh criticism when engaged in a debate. “But this was a different matter altogether. Engaging a lawyer to attack a young researcher while issuing false, defamatory accusations is a challenge to research freedom”.